SUSPICIOUS BANK WITHDRAWALS AND SLOVENIAN FOLK MUSIC

         I hate dealing with banks, don’t you?  I hate them so much that this is the second blog posting I've written about them.  (The first one--DON'T BANK ON IT--can be found in the July 2013 archives if you care to read that, as well.)

At any rate, my husband, Stij, had a major run-in with Bank of America this morning.

He’s lying down now, with a tumbler of Jim Beam on an adjacent table and a cool washcloth on his head.

The reason? This morning, he got a notice that his account ATM card…his BUSINESS account ATM card…had been frozen due to “suspicious activity.”

Stij called them.   It went something like this:

STIJ:  Hello.  I have a question about my account.

BB (Bank Bimbo—the blonde with 100 pounds of hair, a perpetual rictus, the latest fad design in fingernails, and a brain by Mattel):  Let me put you through to our Accounts Manager.  One moment.

While on hold, Stij listened to the entire Beatles catalog—twice.

TLTYTMAMWVHCY (The Latest Twelve-year-old They Made A Manager, Whose Voice Hasn’t Changed Yet):   What can I do to…I mean FOR you today?

STIJ:  You might tell me why you froze my business account ATM card.

Then, the kid made the nearly always fatal error of trying to be funny when Stij is upset:

TLTY: (Chuckles) But surely you know that nothing ever freezes in Arizona!

STIJ:  Don’t call me ‘Shirley.’ (He’d been waiting for the opportunity to use that line ever since ‘Airplane’ came out.)

TLTY:  Why would I call you ‘Shirley?’  You say your account has been frozen?  Gimmie the number and I’ll look it up for you, dude.

The TLTY is too young to even get the joke.  Fade back in pissed off mood.

Stij gave him the number and was put back on hold to listen to, ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ many, many times, followed by The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson, translated into Chinese and read by a 100-year-old constipated employee at a one-hour dry cleaners.

TLTY:  According to our records, your account isn’t frozen, man.  Oh, and do you also go by the name of ‘Buster Lifshitz Horowitz?”

STIJ:  Not now, not ever. You must have mistyped it.  Try re-keying the number, please.

TLTY:  Oops, sorry, my man.  Just a sec.  Partied kinda hard last night, y’know?

STIJ:  No, I do not know.  I work my ass off ten or twelve hours a day to put money in your bank in order for you, Mr. Party Boy, to tell me that I can’t have it when I want it!

TLTY:  Yeah, I know—bummer, man, huh?  But you really need to take a chill pill, babe.

STIJ:  Listen, you human cabbage, just find out what’s going on!  I have lumber to buy today and I need that card!

TLTY:  Wow, man, sounds like you didn’t get much sleep last night.

STIJ:  I am coming down there—right now!

TLTY:  Hold it, there, Hondo—your account just came up.  Stij?  Is that right?

STIJ:  YES!

TLTY:  Your account’s frozen.

STIJ:  I KNOW THE ACCOUNT IS FROZEN!  I WANT TO KNOW WHY IT’S FROZEN!

TLTY:  Says here ‘Suspicious Activity.’  Been doing anything suspicious lately?

STIJ:  Nothing unusual—just depositing and withdrawing money.

TLTY:  Oh, well, there’s your problem right there.

STIJ:  WHAT?

TLTY:  The withdrawals.  I see here you withdrew nearly $100 over the past week.

STIJ:  I have a business.  This is a business account.  I needed the money to buy building materials! Let me ask you something--why do you never consider DEPOSITS suspicious?  They could be from people selling drugs or stealing cars and reselling them, or…FROM ROBBING BANKS!  You could actually be laundering money and not even know it.  What about that?

TLTY:  Uh…let me find out about that…hold on…”

STIJ:  Nooooo, not hold ag…

Now it’s Slovenian folk dancing music, followed by Rod McKuen reciting from Stanyon Street and Other Sorrows, followed by Richard Nixon singing the Carpenter’s greatest hits.

Now Stij hated the British, Wagner, the Chinese, Slovenia, poetry, and Richard Nixon—singing ANYTHING!  And to top it all off, there was somebody at the door.

It was the police, who arrived to arrest Stij for threatening to rob Bank of America; but they left without him when they came in, saw the kitchen half-melted and smelled the chili I was attempting to make for lunch.

I guess they decided he’d already been punished enough.

CROWBARS, BLOW TORCHES, AND DINING OUT

These days, with the economy in the state it’s in (Rhode Island, I think), I am doing my level best to find multiple uses for everyday items in the home in order to save money and make my husband, Stij, realize what a clever wife he has and how lucky he is.

And you know, I think I’m doing pretty well at it.

For instance—homemade jam.  I grow grapes in the back yard and this past season I was able to put up a quart and a half of grape jam.  I’m sure it’s delicious, but I managed to overcook it to the point where the seven packets of pectin I added just said, “Oh, fuck it,” and vulcanized the entire batch.

However, being the inventive person that I am, after scraping it out of the pot with a crowbar, I discovered a myriad (don’t you love that word?) of other uses.  For example, after a mere hour of blowtorching, I found that I could reshape the jam into intriguing sculptural forms; that is, until Stij came in, demanding to know “…what that horrific smell is and why are there 127,000 fire ants on the counter?” just prior to his donning oven mitts and chucking the whole thing into a trash can--which he then threw over the wall into our neighbor’s yard.

“He’ll never know where it came from,” Stij said confidently.

All right, so the multi-use jam didn’t work out too well.  But how about brownies?  Brownies can be used for a lot of different things, too.

Recently, I made a quadruple batch of them, but forget to add the eggs.  After employing the crowbar previously used in the jam, and cutting the hardened sheets into pieces on Stij’s band saw, there were enough of them to glue to the concrete slab by the front door in a really attractive herringbone pattern.  While debating whether or not to paint them, Stij walked by and told me that if I put any more of my failed baked goods outside that the fire ants have threatened to eat the tires on his truck—just to get rid of the taste.

So much for that.

Well, how about taffy, then?  See?  I don’t even need to write anything; you’re already laughing.  Why bother?

All right, since I screwed up the stuff anybody can make, I reasoned, “I guess they’re just too simple—maybe I should try something more challenging.”

Oh, don’t ask ME where I get this logic—just roll with it.

I tried baclava, which ended up tasting like a balaclava.  However, if carefully sanded and polished to a high gloss, it makes a really interesting sound when it hits the garbage can—ask my husband.

Another thing I made that had multiple purposes, which was the original premise of this column—remember?—was pancake syrup.  I figured, no problem, I’ll go outside, tap a tree, and do it the old fashioned way.  So out I went with my peg and bucket and my drill.  I drilled an appropriately sized hole, affixed the bucket hanger and adjourned indoors to watch “Jeopardy.” 

When I went back out, the bucket was full of milky white sap.  I hauled it in and dumped it into a pot on the stove to begin boiling it down.

It didn’t boil down.

It boiled over the pot, ran down the side of the oven, and onto the linoleum floor, where it proceeded to eat right through to the foundation.  The fumes alone were removing the paint, sheetrock, and framing.

It is to Stij’s credit that when he walked in on Armageddon he didn’t just kill me and toss me over the wall to keep the garbage can company.  When we finally got everything back under control, we assessed the wreckage.  We had exactly half a house left.  Why it stopped at half, I’ll never know.  Maybe the doorknobs gave it indigestion.  All I know is that Stij managed to stuff it all into his refuse trailer and drove it off to the landfill, after first saying a Novena that they would take it when he got there. 

He was underwhelmed upon his return three hours later.

“What happened?  Did they take it?”

“Eventually,” he said.  “When they asked me what it was, I said, ‘pancake syrup,’ then they got all pissed off because they thought I was being a smartass.”

“So what happened?”

“I explained your culinary exploits.  Two of them have wives who cook just like you do.  We cracked a couple of beers and traded stories, and here I am.  What I want to ask you is this—which tree did you tap?”

“That huge Rubber Tree out back.”

“That is NOT the kind of tree you tap for syrup.  You tap a MAPLE tree.”

 “Oh, I know that.  I just thought I’d add some maple flavoring to it after it was boiled down.  Sap is sap, right?  Your face is really red—are you having blood pressure problems again?”

“High blood pressure is the least of my worries lately.” 

“Well, then, what do you want for dinner?”

        “A paid-up life insurance policy.  Since we only have half a kitchen left, we’ll be eating out—for the next five months, probably.”

Now see that?  Multiple uses.  Beyond its usual use, pancake syrup can also be used to get your house remodeled, give your husband the opportunity to make new friends, and get you taken out to dinner.  It also makes a great fire ant killer.

I’ll be releasing a cook book later this year, dear reader, so watch this page!

BARF & GRILL

       We had the misfortune to spend three hours at a Bar & Grill in Surprise, Arizona recently, and it’s not a mistake we’ll ever be repeating, unlike the food.
       This joint is the 19^th hole of the golf course at a retirement RV Resort.  Stij and I were doing some remodeling work at one of the homes over there, and because the restaurant was close by, we stopped in.

The place was deserted, so we figured we could get in and out quickly, as we had a great deal of work to do at the site.

“Let’s just get burgers—those will be quick.”

We sat.

We waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, a 120-year-old waitress tottered over to our table, plunked down menus and tottered away to fetch us some ice water while we gave the bill of fare a once-over. 

We both wanted cheeseburgers.

We put the menus down.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Just before we turned to stone, Methuselah’s wife managed to find her way back to us to take our order. She didn’t ask us how we wanted our burgers cooked, and we chalked that up to E Coli fears.  Perhaps they cook them all well-done as a matter of course, we reasoned—some places do.  We normally like them cooked medium, but better to avoid E coli.

So, we waited.

During this wait time, I was able to recite every poem that Poe, Coleridge AND Wordsworth ever wrote.

Finally, the waitress appeared in the distance, headed our way, orders in hand.

“If she moves any slower, people are going to come by and start harvesting her organs,” Stij said.

She put the plates down, then went off to get our French fries.

The burgers were so charred that it seemed more appropriate to pray and scatter their ashes than to consume them.

“How are your burgers?” she asked when she brought the fries.

“Suitable for filling potholes,” I replied.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “Do you want to send them back?”

“Yes, we do, but we’ll just have to eat them.  We don’t have another 45 minutes to wait for replacements.”

“Oh, well, I’m sorry,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and wambling off.

“I certainly hope they’re going to adjust our bill—I’d almost rather eat my socks than this.”

“You may want to,” Stij said through his first bite. “You’d like them better.

I took my own bite. “Oh, God!  Pass the ketchup, mustard, relish and anything else I can use to kill the taste.”

Keep in mind that we were paying for this.

Next to visit our table, the ‘chef.’

“Was there a problem with your food?” she asked.

In answer, Stij opened his bun and displayed the blackened hockey puck within.

“How did you want them cooked?” she asked, like this was the only normal way to have them.

“Cooked, yes, cremated, no.”

“Did you tell your waitress how you wanted them done?”

“No, and she didn’t ask.  We assumed that you did everything well-done, not well-beyond-the-pale.  Well-done ought to still have moisture and flavor, yes?”

“Well, sorry.”   Clearly angry, she left.

Apparently, the ‘chef’ then gave the waitress a talking to, because she appeared next.

“Please, if you want your food cooked in a certain way, you need to tell me!’ she exclaimed in an exasperated tone, then huffed away.

I looked at Stij.  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t SHE supposed to ask if we forget to tell her?  And if she doesn’t ask, isn’t the ‘chef’ supposed to send her back to find out, rather than take a wild guess that burned shoe leather would be the way to go?”

“Yep.  Apparently, this is all our fault.”

“What’d we ever do to them?  Jesus, if our experience is any indication, they seem to hate their customers here, don’t they?”

“Evidently, we interrupted their nap time and everyone is a little bit cranky,” Stij said. “We just won’t come back here again.”

“I don’t even want to drive by here again!”

Next, we got the bill.

No adjustment. 

We paid $20 for awful food that would be reminding us of the experience for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, until we got home and slugged down some bicarb.

While we watched a movie that later that night, Stij said, “I’ll say one thing for that restaurant, though.”

“Really? And what's that?”

“It makes your cooking look pretty damned good.”

I’d have smacked him if it hadn’t been true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PAY TOILETS, EXTERMINATORS & LOBSTER TAILS

More Stupid Questions Answered

 

Why do doughnuts have holes?

So rats can use them as life preservers after they chew through the water main beneath the doughnut shop.
 

Why don’t people get goosebumps on their faces?

To keep from frightening little children
 

Why do some places use salt and others use sand to treat icy roads?

Because some places actually want to melt the stuff and other places want to give you a brief sense of security just before you hit the ice under the sand and crash into a tree.  In the latter locales, you will always discover that the police chief’s brother owns the town auto body shop.

When lobster tails are sold to restaurants, what is done with the rest of the lobster?

They are fitted with little platforms with wheels.  You’ll see hundreds of them protesting outside any Red Lobster restaurant. 

Why is the scoring system in tennis so weird?

If you don’t get it, stop complaining and go play baseball, already. 

What is the difference between a kit and a caboodle?

They are both in Cahoots—a small town in Wisconsin—go there and ask them. 

Why is the sky blue?

So we know where to stop mowing. 

Whatever happened to pay toilets?

You could ask me any question and this is the one foremost in your mind?  

Why are all the executions in the USA held between midnight and 7:00 AM?

So the executioners can get in a little overtime 

Why do some ranchers place old boots on fence posts?

Because there’s a guy in town with a wooden leg that they’re all making fun of. 

Why do many Arizona exterminators wear hard hats?

If you saw the size of the scorpions and tarantulas down here, you wouldn’t have to ask.

Why are there 18 holes on a golf course?

So that there can be a 19^th hole, without which golfers would be very sad.

MAGMA, GRAFFITI, AND REFRIGERATORS

        Well, it finally happened.

The refrigerator died.

When we bought it in 2005, the guys at COOL IT (I know, great name for a fridge/freezer store, right?) said it was a “renter’s refrigerator.”

We were renters.  We needed a refrigerator.  Seemed like fate was smiling upon us, so we bought it. 

It was more like bad karma laughing its ass off.

We went to bed that night secure in the knowledge that we would no longer be living on take-out food, since COOL IT would deliver our fridge the next day.

The following morning dawned with sunshine and birdcroak (they don’t sing in Arizona—way too hot).  Stij and I lingered over our coffees and planned what to shop for after the fridge was installed and running.

“Gee, it’s already ten o’clock,” Stij said, glancing at his watch. “Didn’t they say they’d be here by eight?”

“Oh, it is that late already?  Yeah, they did.  Want me to call them?”

“Yep.  I’ve got to get to work.  I’m glazing doors and drawer fronts for Nowlin’s kitchen today, and I’ll need to set up in the driveway.”

I called.

I spoke to an associate.

I hung up.

“Well?”

“It’s here.”

“What is?”

“The fridge.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know—he said they delivered it at six this morning. So I asked him to read me the delivery address and he had the right one.”

“Oh, don’t tell me…”

We dashed to the door and opened it to find the fridge, standing like a sentry, at the end of the driveway.

“Oh for…”

“Honey, remember your blood pressure…”

“I’m remembering it, and you will too, when blood started shooting out my eyes, which is going to happen any minute now!  Phone, please.”

I handed it to him and closed the door behind him to allow privacy while he screamed at the associate.

The transaction was beginning to remind me of my Office Max farrago (see archived Weekly Rants).  I walked to the end of the driveway to check for damage on our ‘new to us’ appliance.  The crazy way it was tilting made me fear that it had been a drive-by delivery, having been edged off the truck as it slowed to 10 mph.

But no, they had just left it leaning precariously on the edge of the curb…and the street facing side was now covered with spray-painted graffiti.  All my life, I’ve wanted a refrigerator that says, ‘FOCK YOU’ in rainbow colors, and now it was mine.

I should mention here that we don’t live in a great neighborhood…or an educated one, for that matter.

Stij returned from his eruption with a little magma still dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

“Should I ask how it went?”

“They are coming here now to pick it up. They are bringing a refund check with them.”

“Uh oh.”

“They were foolhardy enough to tell me that they only deliver and do not install—something they failed to mention when we bought it.”

“Uh, there’s been a further development,” I said.

“A what?”

Oh, god.

I took his hand, which was already beginning to clench, and showed him.

He was surprisingly calm.

This is always a bad sign. This happens just before the top of his head shoots off and goes into orbit around Mars.

At that moment, in a absolute miracle of bad timing, the truck from COOL IT arrived.

They disembarked, took one look at the fridge and said, “What the hell did you do this for? It’s defaced. We can’t take it back now.  ”

I just shook my head and stepped out of the way…two streets out of the way.

By the time the dust settled, the fridge was loaded and Stij had his check in hand, with the promise of a replacement fridge to be delivered and installed the following day, COD. We watched the truck lumber off down the street.

“I was too far away to hear clearly—how did you get them to take it back with all that spray-paint on it?”

“While we were arguing, their truck got a dose of what the fridge did—watch when it turns the corner.”

Well, at least with the fridge as evidence, the ‘UP YER’S’ painted in eight-foot rainbow-colored letters will be easier to explain.

DOG SHAMING AND PARROT SUITS

The trendy thing these days seems to be dog shaming.  As a matter of fact, I posted a series of such photos  on my very own Facebook timeline this morning.

But then, I thought about it.

Why are dogs so deserving of public shame?  Because of their collective failure to act like humans?  They are dogs.  They are acting like dogs.  They are being what they are. There should be no shame attached to that.

And why are dogs the only animal being shamed with signs hung around their necks, such as “I peed on the Pope during an audience,” or “My farts make people cry,” or maybe “I ate a case of alphabet soup and am now shitting out better speeches than any politician you'd care to name.”

You know why.

Cats would disembowel you if you ever tried that crap with them. At the very least, they have their lawyers on speed-dial and are the major filers of frivolous lawsuits in America today. Yours would be just one more in a long series.  They usually win, by the way.  Their lawyers are motivated, because feline wrath is something nobody wants to expose themselves to--even in a hazmat suit! 

And as if that isn't enough, I discovered today that there is a cat website for shaming humans.  Cats are smart about it, though.  They wait until the human is asleep, then put up sarcastic signs or dress them up  take photos of them, and post them.  And yes, cats CAN work camera phones and computers.  They also understand credit cards. Why do you think FEDEX delivered all that fish from Pike Place Market last week?

For example:

 

Or how about:

And when they can’t find a decapitated horse:

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is:  As humans, we have much more reason to be shamed than any other living creature. Also, don’t mess with cats . . . ever.

STATISTICS, GEORGE CLOONEY AND WHITE RATS

        You know what really bugs me?  Statistics and the way people manipulate them.  Let’s have some studies that make some kind of sense for a change, shall we?

For example:

   9 out of 10 doctors recommend food as a cure for starvation.

   New study shows that women just want you to leave them the hell alone.

   Testing in Switzerland reveals that dogs are unlikely to rob banks. Cats, however, are.

   Testing in the Ukraine reveals that dogs are illiterate but cats write for the National Enquirer.

   Testing in the USA reveals that 9 out of 10 dogs make it a point to lick their butts just before licking your face. Cats will just spit in your eye.

   People Magazine Readers’ Poll Results:  10 out of 10 readers say, “Shut the hell up about George Clooney, Already!”

   After years of research, M.I.T. discovers that everything’s already been done and there’s really nothing new.

   Psychology Today study: Why don’t people like prison? (Rather than allocate actual funds for this, the psychologist was simply airlifted to Attica and locked up to do his own research and, hopefully, learn to ask more pertinent questions in future studies.)

   Harvard research scientists discover that in every case tested, drowning deaths in rats were caused by water.  Application to humans currently being tested.

   Statistics show that drowning deaths are on the rise in Cambridge, Massachusetts, among both white rats and humans. Harvard officials postulate plague, decline interviews.